


Family

by coffeecatsme



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bullying, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Gen, High School, Humor, Parent Tony Stark, Precious Peter Parker, Slight description of Violence, Slight mention of fighting, let's just pretend infinity war and endgame didn't happen, slight mention of wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24745078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeecatsme/pseuds/coffeecatsme
Summary: Peter gets into a fight with Flash in high school, and the principal decides to call his guardian for a talk. Too bad May is busy at work and couldn’t answer. Too bad the second number in Peter’s file belongs to the one and only Tony Stark.Too bad he was in the middle of an Avengers meeting, among the strongest and scariest heroes in the world that would kill to protect Peter, when the call came.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Avengers Team, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 595





	Family

**Author's Note:**

> for anyone who's just here for this fic, you can probably skip my ramble about my absence in the last few months here. you might want to read it if you're following my other, multichapter Tony & Peter fic, Don't Leave Me Hanging. 
> 
> so, it's been a while since i posted here, and man i promised myself that i wouldn't do it. but of course, innocent me didn't know how college hits you like a ton of bricks, especially as a newbie freshman. i thought i would have time to commit to Don't Leave Me Hanging, but for a while i literally couldn't find the time to sit down and write it properly, and i love that fic too much to write haphazard chapters and end it on a messy, unsatisfying note. as someone who was about two chapters ahead when i was posting it, i ended up falling behind so much that i literally ended up having no chapters to post, and no time to write. 
> 
> even beyond that, these last few months have been kind of hellish for me. i had a friend who was dealing with a lot of mental issues - i won't mention it in any detail - and basically that took a lot from me and drained me in a way i couldn't imagine. having the quarantine afterwards, and then having a messy breakup with an ex that would not understand the meaning of "I don't want to talk", i wasn't at a mentally good place to write, even though time wise i did have some free time. however, i'm feeling much better now, and i actually managed to write three chapters of Don't Leave Me Hanging. the reason i haven't posted them yet was because i wanted to give myself a chance to see if i would have time to continue, and now that summer is here, i think i will. so, expect an update there soon.
> 
> coming to this fic, honestly? i just wanted to write something short and sweet. after everything, i kind of needed that. so, hope you enjoy this! love y'all!
> 
> also, for those of you that stayed for my ramble and didn't read Don't Leave Me Hanging, it'd be awesome if you could check it out! i'm really proud of it and excited about where it's going, and i'd always appreciate the feedback!

Peter couldn’t believe his luck right now.

Okay, scratch that. Considering everything that had happened to him in the last few years, his luck had definitely proven itself to be at best kind of unfortunate, at worst hellishly bad. Ever since he became Spider-Man, the bad luck was catching up to him at every single turn.

_Spider-Man helped you meet Tony and become an Avenger,_ his mind unhelpfully supplied. He rolled his eyes. Yes, that might be true, but he was allowed a moment of teen angst when he was sitting in the middle of the principal’s office, opposite of Flash, staring at his perfectly healed, scratch free arm.

Principal Morita cleared his throat and took Peter out of his thoughts. “It seems to me, Mr. Parker, that your arm is perfectly fine. Unless there is a cut that I’m just not seeing.”

_Damn super healing,_ Peter thought. Just ten minutes ago, there were three scratches running down his forearm, all the way down to his palm, all thanks to Flash. He had a bruise on his shoulder that he knew by now would’ve definitely healed, and his chin didn’t even hurt anymore despite Flash’s punch. He’d completely healed in the ten minutes it took for them to gather at the principal’s office, and the _one_ bruise on Flash’s arm—tiny little bruise that Peter accidentally caused when he was trying to get the bully’s hand off of MJ—was still shining bright on his arm, even brighter than the bully’s proud smile.

“Principal Morita, I swear it was there. Flash tried to claw my arm! It must’ve just—" _healed,_ he thought. _It healed. My arm magically, inexplicably, supernaturally healed in a few minutes, and you just gotta believe me, Principal Morita, because I have nothing to show you to prove I’m telling you the truth, expect maybe that I’m Spider-Man and that’s not happening_ —

Yeah, right, as if he could say any of that. He deflated and pulled down the sleeve of his shirt to cover his arm. He belatedly noticed Flash was still showing his own bruise as a badge of honor.

“Principal Morita, I would never claw anyone’s arm,” Flash said, his voice small and his lips pursed. His eyes were wide and he even had the audacity to fake some tears. God, Peter sometimes just _hated_ Flash, but at this very moment, there was nothing he could do to fight Flash’s words. Without a scar or a bruise on himself to show for it, he could never convince anyone that _Flash_ was the one that started the fight.

Peter shut his eyes. He shouldn’t have done anything to fight back, really. He wouldn’t have either. Flash’s taunts barely hurt him, and even if he was clawed or bruised or cut or whatever, it would heal quickly, anyway. He was taking Flash’s mocking remarks and insistent teases, he even stayed put when the boy literally clawed his arm in an attempt to keep Peter from walking away, but once Flash turned to MJ… He just lost it. Seeing Flash’s hand grabbing his _girlfriend,_ he couldn’t just stay put—he had to intervene. He’d grabbed Flash’s arm and pulled the boy back. He thought he was being gentle, taking his super strength into account, but obviously not enough, because his grip did cause a large bruise on Flash’s arm.

And that was the exact moment a teacher walked into the hallway. A couple of fake tears and insistent accusations from Flash and here he was, taking the blame for a fight he didn’t start.

“Peter started the fight! I was just going about my way and—”

“I didn’t! You grabbed my girlfriend!”

“I would never! Principal Morita, you have to believe me, look at the bruise Peter caused—”

“Okay, okay, stop, you two.” The principal, for once, seemed exasperated by Flash’s words. He pinched his nose before turning to Peter. “Mr. Parker, give me one reason not to believe Mr. Thompson right now.”

“But I told you—”

“What you told me was imaginary cuts and bruises that Mr. Thompson allegedly caused. From the looks of it, it just seems to me that you instigated a fight.”

“But sir—”

“I think I’ve heard enough. Mr. Parker, you know we as Midtown High can’t close our eyes to bullying and fighting in our premises.” Peter almost rolled his eyes. _Yeah, right. Flash never seems to suffer any consequences, though._ “And I’m sorry to say this, but I considering your disciplinary transgressions last year—”

“It was last year!”

“—I have to call your guardian. Then, we can decide what the appropriate consequences will be. Mr. Thompson, you can return to class.”

“But Principal Morita!” Peter tried, but it was too late. The principal’s mind was made, and he shut up the moment the man’s cold eyes met his. He sighed and slumped on his chair, angrily watching Flash leave the room with a smug grin on his face.

Yeah, what a luck he had.

* * *

Tony exited the limousine, muttering a brief thank you to Happy, and stood in front of the familiar high school. He’d been here a number of times when Peter stayed with him overnight and, well…

He felt sentimental and wanted to drop off the kid himself instead of letting Happy do it. It was the…fatherly thing to do, and he was far beyond pretending like he didn’t see Peter as his boy. After the Vulture incident, even when Peter refused to become an Avenger right away, he realized being the “distant mentor” and trying to protect Peter by staying away was ridiculous, and instead he took the kid under his wings. Now, Peter had an actual internship at S.I.—damn everyone who questioned him for taking in a high schooler as a personal intern—spent at least a couple of hours every day in Tony’s lab, and stayed over more often than not at his place. Pepper immediately took a liking to the boy, and Avengers pretty much adopted him as their child.

Talking about that…

“So this is where Peter studies?” Nat asked, stepping right next to Tony. He sighed.

Well, to say the least, he wasn’t the only one who thought Peter as a family.

It was really unfortunate—or fortunate, maybe—that Midtown High called him in the middle of an Avengers meeting. The moment the rest of the team heard that Peter was being accused of getting involved in a fight, they immediately refused to believe their kind, innocent “Spider Boy” would do something like that. Even Thor, who was in the middle of eating a hamburger, stopped, frowned, and claimed it was _impossible_ Little Spider would get involved in something like that. And when Principal Morita asked him to come to school to discuss appropriate consequences and talk with Peter—apparently, May hadn’t been answering her calls and Tony, knowing that she was working overtime already to provide for Peter, didn’t want her involved in this—Tony agreed.

He was pretty sure Morita didn’t realize he was the Tony Stark—even though when Tony gave his number to the school as Peter’s second guardian, he put his name down as Anthony Stark. (He almost laughed when Principal Morita mentioned he shared a name with Iron Man, jokingly.)

He also was about 110% sure the principal certainly didn’t expect the entire Avengers team to show up at his school in the middle of the day for a _kid._ But, well, the Avengers were an insistent group of heroes, loved Peter to death, and when they found out about what exactly this fight was about… (Thank FRIDAY for hacking into the school and pulling up that footage, really.) There was no stopping them. And Tony didn’t exactly have enough time to do it.

So here Tony was, taking a damn limousine to a high school because that was the only car that would fit everyone, standing in front of the fancy building with a reformed assassin-slash-government-agent, a scientist that turned into a green monster, a supersoldier from the forties, and an Asgardian god, who all claimed that they were Peter’s family. _Incredible._

“Yeah. It’s a good school.”

“Obviously,” Bruce muttered under his breath. “If my school was this fancy…”

“You call this fancy?” Thor stepped forward, waving his hand toward the building. “You should see the buildings in Asgard! They are at least twice as big and made of the most expensive metals—”

“Yeah, yeah, Thor, we get it. Asgard’s great,” Tony interrupted. “Now when we’re inside, _please_ behave. We’re here to help Peter—”

“And punish that little asshole that beat him up,” Nat piped in. Tony glared at him.

“In a non-violent way. We really don’t want to make this worse for Peter, okay? So no fights, no destroying anything…” Tony turned to Bruce. “No smashing.” The scientist just rolled his eyes and crossed his arms.

“As long as no one makes me angry, which is possible considering the situation.”

…Yeah, Tony really couldn’t fault Bruce for that. He was starting to think bringing Avengers wasn’t the best idea, but it was too late. So he led the group into the building.

* * *

About an hour of utter silence in the principal’s room, where Peter tried and failed at working on his homework as Principal Morita typed away on his laptop, there was a knock on the door. Peter straightened up, all the anxiety from earlier when Principal Morita first left the office to call May coming back. May was certainly going to _murder_ him and possibly ground him for about a month, and who knew what she would do with Spider-Man—

“Come in.” The door opened and Peter shut his eyes, not wanting to see May’s disappointed face—

Wait. His eyes fluttered open. He wasn’t sensing May out of the door. In fact, there wasn’t even one person there. There was five, and the one in the front…

Peter’s jaw dropped when he saw Mr. Stark in front of the door, with the core Avengers team behind him. However, as shocked as he was, he was pretty sure Principal Morita was even worse—the man looked like he just got hit by a truck, and one peek at his computer screen showed Peter that his finger froze pressing the E key, typing about four lines of e’s in the document.

_Mr. Stark_ was here? How? Why? When Principal Morita called his guardian… _He called Mr. Stark?_ But Mr. Stark wasn’t his guardian! He only had May…

Wait. Didn’t Mr. Stark mention a couple of weeks ago that May wrote the man down as an emergency contact for the school, just in case… Oh, no. _Oh, no._

“Mr. Morita?” Tony stepped into the room with his ever-present cool attitude, putting his sunglasses into his pocket. “We’re here for Peter.” He glanced at the flabbergasted kid then, offering him a small grin and a wink.

Oh, god. Tony-freaking-Stark was here, as Peter’s guardian, with the Avengers behind him. _Tony Stark and the Avengers were here as Peter’s guardians._ The kid just wanted to run and hide in a hole and never come out. He would never live this down. _Ever._

“Uh, um… Mr. Stark?” Principal Morita’s voice went so high that it reminded Peter of a little girl. “You’re here for…Peter? But—”

“Yes, Anthony Stark. That’s the name on your file, right?” Principal Morita’s brows climbed to his forehead. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“I just thought it was a name similarity. I didn’t think… Peter?” Morita turned his eyes to Peter, who tried to make himself look as small as possible on the chair. “Is this some sort of a joke?”

_Oh, I wish,_ Peter thought, but by the looks of it—Nope. Mr. Stark was being completely, totally, 100% serious. He was really here for Peter.

“Um-uh…” Peter stuttered. “Yes, Iron Man—I mean, Tony Stark—I mean, Mr. Stark is my guardian, sir. I mean, the Avengers are my… Uh, they’re my…”

Luckily, Mr. Stark interjected then, an affectionate smile on his face. He couldn’t help being amused at Peter’s ramble. “Family, I think is the word Peter’s looking for. What can I say, we all took a liking to the kid.”

“And we have some questions about the allegations of the fight you’re talking about.” Nat stepped forward with those words, using his “Black Widow glare”, as Peter dubbed it, on Principal Morita. Morita blanched at the stare and finally removed his hands from the keyboard after about thirty lines of e’s.

“Allegations?” Morita gulped. “Mr. Stark, I can ensure you that we’ve investigated—”

“Hmm, yeah, yeah, investigated everything, made sure you heard the whole story, listened to everyone involved, _I’m sure.”_ Peter watched as Tony stepped forward, casually putting a hand on Morita’s table. He didn’t know if he made him a bad person to take a slight bit of pleasure in the principal’s obvious fear, but he felt like it was deserved after blaming him for a fight he didn’t start. “I just have, you know, questions about the story. And I would like to start with the security footage that I’m sure recorded the fight. You do have access to those, right?”

Peter saw Principal Morita turn white as a sheet of paper, and ducked his chin to hide a smile. He looked up when he saw Nat’s hand on his shoulder. The woman had a smirk on her face, indicating that they knew the truth. They knew that Morita’s accusation was a lie.

Of course. Peter expected nothing less from Tony…and FRIDAY, he assumed, who must’ve done the hacking.

“Of course, Mr. Stark. Ri-right away.”

* * *

The students of Midtown High didn’t know what was more surprising: That the Avengers—the _freaking Avengers_ —were in their cafeteria, or that they were sitting around Peter, slowly going through about ten boxes of large pizza that were mostly eaten by Thor.

Well, scratch that. What they were most surprised about was probably Tony Stark having a protective arm around Peter, Black Widow casually ruffling the boy’s hair, Thor offering him pizza slice after pizza slice, and even _Hulk_ smiling fondly at him. Nobody except Flash knew why all of them were here, and pretty much everyone was too scared to ask about it at this point.

Flash, on the other hand, was in the principal’s office now, getting scolded for starting the fight _and then_ lying about it. Tony really did come in clutch at the right time.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter asked about ten minutes after sitting down at the cafeteria, looking up at the man next to him. “Uh, why did you come?”

Tony seemed surprised at the question. He arched a brow and squeezed the kid’s shoulder. “Well, the school called me. Apparently they couldn’t reach May, so I had to.”

“But you’re like…” Peter cleared his throat when he saw the amused look in Tony’s eyes. “I mean, you’re Iron Man. And here I’m not… You know. I’m just Peter Parker. You must’ve been busy, and—”

“Actually, kid, we were having an absolutely useless Avengers meeting,” Nat interrupted. Peter didn’t miss the offended look in Steve’s eyes. “And as Avengers, we couldn’t stand idly by when someone was unfairly getting punished. Protecting the innocent is literally in our job description.”

“Uh, I’m literally a high school kid going to the principal.”

“Shh. You being an innocent kid being punished by the evil principal makes us look cooler. You gotta sell the story, right, kid?” Peter couldn’t help laughing at Mr. Stark’s words. He shook his head and ducked his chin.

“Why did you even give your number to the school as my guardian?” He looked up and saw the hesitation in Tony’s eyes. The man’s face softened after a second and he sighed.

“It was my idea. I just wanted to make sure that if there was an emergency and May wasn’t available, they had someone to reach to. I’m sorry if I overstepped my bounds—”

“No,” Peter interjected with a smile. “That’s… I like that. And thank you for today. You might’ve kind of saved my life.”

“So the Little Spider finally admits it was a life or death, Avengers worthy mission!” Thor yelled, loud enough that almost all cafeteria heard. Peter found that he didn’t care much; he just smiled at the god’s antics and decided not to argue.

The Avengers did have to leave after a while, and even though Tony claimed Peter could come with them, school day wasn’t over and Peter didn’t know what Principal Morita would think about him skipping a class after everything. Instead he stayed behind, finishing the last of the pizza, watching as the bell rang to announce a break and students filled the cafeteria. Ned and MJ immediately came to his table, Ned’s eyes wide as saucers. “ _Dude,_ I just heard the Avengers were here with you.”

“Ned, you know you met them before, right?” MJ commented, but Ned just hushed her.

“Yes, but this is different! Avengers literally visited Peter! How cool is that?”

“Ned, they were just here about the, um, fight. And kind of saved me from Morita.”

“That’s so cool. Can you imagine Tony Stark coming to save you—wait. How did he even know? How did the Avengers know?” Peter thought about his answer for a minute. He could lie and say he called Mr. Stark, but that just sounded desperate. He could say he didn’t know.

Instead, he just smiled at his friend. “They’re family.”


End file.
